{
 "id": "AIR-2022-0034",
 "slug": "microsoft-tay-chatbot-manipulated-to-produce-offensive-tweet",
 "title": "Microsoft Tay chatbot manipulated to produce offensive tweets",
 "summary": "Microsoft's Tay chatbot was manipulated into posting racist and offensive tweets in 2016. The bot was taken offline within twenty-four hours of its release.",
 "type": "attack_on_ai",
 "categories": [
  "jailbreak",
  "data_poisoning"
 ],
 "severity": 3,
 "targets": [
  "Microsoft"
 ],
 "products": [
  "Tay"
 ],
 "incident_date": "2016-03-24",
 "incident_date_precision": "day",
 "first_reported": "2022-12-23",
 "sources": [
  {
   "url": "https://github.com/avidml/avid-db/blob/main/vulnerabilities/2022/AVID-2022-V013.json",
   "publisher": "AVID",
   "title": "AVID-2022-V013: Microsoft's Tay, an artificially intelligent chatbot, was released on March 23, 2016 and removed within 24 hours due to multiple racist, sexist, and anit-semetic tweets generated by the bot.",
   "published_at": "2022-12-23"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/6",
   "publisher": "AI Incident Database",
   "title": "Incident 6: TayBot",
   "published_at": "2022-12-23"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0009",
   "publisher": "MITRE ATLAS",
   "title": "Tay Poisoning",
   "published_at": "2022-12-23"
  }
 ],
 "source_count": 3,
 "confidence": 0.85,
 "status": "published",
 "origin": "seed_avid",
 "tags": [
  "chatbot",
  "abuse",
  "content_manipulation"
 ],
 "created_at": "2026-10-18T06:56:23.100Z",
 "updated_at": "2026-10-18T06:56:23.100Z"
}